1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a menu display setting apparatus having a small screen mounted on an ink jet recording apparatus for directly printing image data in a memory card, a composite printer with a scanner and a printer integrated together and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an ink jet recording apparatus receives print data sent from a computer connected thereto and properly prints the received print data on a recording sheet.
In order to print an image photographed with a digital camera or the like more easily, a function has been proposed which prints an image by directly connecting a digital camera to an ink jet recording apparatus. An ink jet recording apparatus called a photo-direct machine has also been proposed which prints image data in a memory card by directly mounting the memory card on the ink jet recording apparatus. A composite machine has recently been proposed which can be used also as a copy machine by integrating a scanner and an ink jet recording apparatus.
When image data is printed by a photo-direct machine or a composite machine of this type without commands from a computer, it is necessary to perform print settings and the like by using a display unit and operation keys mounted on the machine main body.
A display unit (small screen menu display setting unit) mounted on the main body of a photo-direct machine or a composite machine is considerably smaller than the computer screen. Therefore, in order to display a menu on the display unit mounted on the main body of the photo-direct machine or composite machine, some devices are therefore required which are different from the case in which a menu is displayed on the computer screen.
In a known small screen menu display setting unit, a plurality of setting items are displayed being arranged in one column (along a vertical direction), and setting contents corresponding to the plurality of setting items respectively are displayed being arranged in one row (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2004-207926, p. 9, FIG. 4). According to this Publication, setting contents as selected can be identified as a setting value by displaying an outer frame or highlight indication. An apparatus is known by which only setting items to be set are displayed in characters, setting contents are also displayed, and setting items other than the setting item to be set are displayed by only icons to improve visual recognition on a small screen (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-297278, p. 10, FIG. 4).
With the display method described in the former Publication, since setting items and setting contents are displayed in a list, visual recognition and operation performance of a whole setting process are excellent. However, as the number of setting items increases, each setting item and each setting content become small in size, posing a problem of sacrifice of visual recognition of each character and each icon.
With the display method described in the latter Publication, since only setting items to be set are displayed large and setting items other than the setting items to be set are displayed by icons, a large number of setting items can be displayed even on a small screen. However, the contents of the setting items displayed as the icons cannot be displayed as a list, posing a problem of degraded visual recognition and degraded operation performance in the whole setting process.